


how little they told us about fire

by strikinglight



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: F/M, Pre-Timeskip | Academy Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:54:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26763172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strikinglight/pseuds/strikinglight
Summary: “It was only a joke.” Her returning smile, when it finally breaks, is small and serene. “But perhaps you think me incapable of such things.”“There’s not a single thing I think you incapable of, and that’s not a joke,” he says.Claude and Edelgard, on being awake.
Relationships: Edelgard von Hresvelg/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 8
Kudos: 74





	how little they told us about fire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thimble](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thimble/gifts).
  * Inspired by [you have my heart](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27121178) by [thimble](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thimble/pseuds/thimble). 



> More unsaid things for Bent! Happy birthday, Bent!
> 
> [Title and epigraph.](https://twitter.com/beanofswords/status/1226719731933048832)

_I wonder_ _  
_ _if I could ever tell anyone about you._

_— Stacie Cassarino, “Diagram for Wind”_

*

From where he’s perched on the roof of the dormitory, Claude hears the footsteps first, and then sees the flame.

Neither the sound nor the sight is any great spectacle; each one barely a ripple, really, likely to go unnoticed even with someone around to notice. Except he’s not any old someone, and whatever life he has to his name now has been built on making something of a craft out of noticing things, and so when he lays his ear to the shingles the movement across the carpet in the room below reaches him all the same. A restless pacing back and forth, back and forth in circles. Then the glow of a lantern being lit, then a window opening into the midsummer night.

“I know you’re there.” Edelgard’s voice, too, comes from below—quiet, but clear enough to carry toward someone listening for it.

Claude leans over the eaves, letting his body hang upside-down, and her window comes into view, and beyond it her room: the bed still made, the immaculate desk. The lit lantern in one corner, and standing just beyond the small shuddering circle of light it casts, Edelgard holding a dagger.

No, not a real dagger. A letter opener—a slender bronze thing, barely two fingers wide. Not an instrument of death by any means, but something that he imagines could be one, with enough commitment. And it’s certainly true that if there’s anyone in this place who can commit to wielding whatever’s closest at hand like a weapon, readily, should the need ever arise, it would be her.

“Of course you do,” he says, and turns back up, lowering himself feet first onto the sill as though he belongs here. As though he isn’t causing any disturbances to speak of, making an entrance like this. “I’d expect no less.”

“Claude.” Edelgard’s words have dropped to a whisper. “If Hubert were to find you here—”

“That won’t be a problem,” says Claude. She gives him such a look then that he wouldn’t put it past her to push him straight out again on blind instinct, so he deems it wise to continue, “I haven’t poisoned him, if that’s what you’re afraid of. I just thought old Hubie’d been looking kind of run down, so I slipped him a little magnolia bark with the soup this evening—you know, to help him sleep.”

“To help him sleep,” Edelgard repeats, dubiously, lifted eyebrow and all.

“Sure.” Claude settles against the window frame, and regards her with a smile he’s been practicing, studiously, for moments like this. “I’d have done the same for you if I knew you’d be up wearing a hole in the floor with your pacing.”

“Do you know so much about sleep aids that you feel justified doling out unsolicited prescriptions to your schoolmates?”

Her fighting stance hasn’t relaxed—the hand with the knife still up, the shoulders still squared high. It only stands to reason that someone like Edelgard sleeps and wakes ready for combat, if she allows herself to sleep at all.

He wonders—only briefly, but not for the first time—what it would take to make her laugh.

“I know enough from what I observe, princess, and I’ve a generous heart. I worry about you, that’s all.”

Edelgard lets out a breath as she turns away, shows him her back like she doesn’t care he’s there, but Claude knows this is a ruse only. When she walks back to her desk to finally put the knife down (still in hand’s reach), rearrange the books already stacked neatly to one side into two (smaller, but no less neat) stacks, he feels her continuing to watch him out the corner of one eye. “I find that hard to believe.”

“The bit about what I know, or the bit about my heart?” He takes care to say the word _heart_ lightly—so lightly it evaporates the moment Edelgard answers, “All of it,” as if it was never there at all.

Perhaps it means she doesn’t believe anything he’s said to her tonight. Or perhaps she doesn’t believe anything he’s ever said to her, or will say. Claude wouldn’t blame her, either way, so he lets it be.

“You’ve probably already guessed this, but I don’t sleep much either. Not at night, anyway.”

“No, indeed. Instead you make a game of sneaking around the monastery, and particularly into the library. You read all night, sometimes all the way to sunrise, and compensate by napping your free hours away during the day, which has the added benefit of making you appear more like a layabout than you really are.” Finally out of things to busy herself with at her desk, Edelgard returns to the window, and stands before Claude with her arms folded. “You’re not likely to grow much taller with such habits, you know.”

Claude does not feel the need to ask her how she knows all this. Nor does he feel the need to point out, for fear of stating the obvious, that he did not go to the library tonight, even if he could have. So he ducks his head down, affects a grimace instead. “Way to hit where it hurts, Edelgard. That’s low, especially for you.”

“It was only a joke.” Edelgard’s returning smile, when it finally breaks, is small and serene. “But perhaps you think me incapable of such things.”

“There’s not a single thing I think you incapable of, and that’s not a joke,” says Claude, and as an extra token of good faith he reaches out one conciliatory hand to her. “What do you say? Peace?”

To Edelgard’s credit, she doesn’t hesitate when she gives him her hand. It’s ungloved, all razor-thin scars and axe calluses, all warm blood under the skin—not delicate, not even a little.

“All right, Claude von Riegan. Peace, for now.”

To Edelgard’s credit, she doesn’t pull it away when he bends to press his lips to the knuckles, just once, before rising again. That’s not a joke, either.

It’s a warning, perhaps, or a test, or a promise. Whatever it is—and whatever they’ll be, at the end of these strange hours—they’re nothing more than a boy and a girl at a window tonight. Bare hand in bare hand, and the light from her lantern on his face.

“See you in the morning,” Claude says, before he jumps—and he’ll remember the way she leans out beyond the sill, still watching, as the shadows below open their arms to catch him.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! i'm on [twitter](https://twitter.com/strikingIight).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [you have my heart](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27121178) by [thimble](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thimble/pseuds/thimble)




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